Orin Hatch (R-UT) and others seem to think trashing the US Constitution for another seat in the House of Representatives is a good idea.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States … No Person shall be a Representative who shall not … when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

- Article I of the United States Constitution

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.

- Article VI of the United States Constitution

The House of Representatives seems set to grow by two Members, to 437, after next year’s election. Yesterday the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act passed a key procedural vote in the Senate, making passage of the legislation, which Barack Hussein Obama supports.

Utah will join the District in court if the D.C. Voting Act faces legal challenges after passing Congress, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Monday.

“It will be debated constitutionally by the Supreme Court, and I think it will get a rigorous hearing; hopefully, a quick hearing,” said Mr. Huntsman, a Republican. “You have an injustice in that you have people paying taxes that aren’t represented. And in our state, you have injustice in that we have a whole lot of people that are underrepresented.”

Critics say that even if the House and Senate pass the bill, it would be shot down by the Supreme Court as a violation of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states “representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states.” The District is not considered a state and is largely overseen by Congress.

In 2000 the United States District Court for the District of Columbia affirmed this truth, writing:

“The Constitution does not contemplate that the District may serve as a state for purposes of the apportionment of congressional representatives.”

The Supreme Court later affirmed that decision. An argument the Left is using to push this blatantly unconstitutional measure is the argument that Art.1 sec. 8′s grant to Congress to exercise “exclusive Legislation” over the District, gives them the power to grant the District a seat in the House.

Heritage Foundation fellow Hans von Spakovsky exposes how specious this claim is:

The Constitution’s provision giving Congress the power to run the affairs of the District of Columbia — the seat of the nation’s capitol — doesn’t wipe out other parts of the document. Congress could not, for example, restrict the First Amendment rights of District residents.

Furthermore, the very same section of the Constitution also applies to “Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards” and other federal properties. But it would be ridiculous to assert, on the basis of that text, that Congress has the power to award House seats to an army base, federal office building, or Navy pier.

Conservatives are not alone in pointing out what a blatant violation of the Constitution S. 160 would be. Liberal constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley writes:

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention or ratification conventions would have worked out such specific and exacting rules for the composition of Congress, only to give the majority of Congress the right to create a new form of voting members from federal enclaves like the District. It would have constituted the realization of the worst fears for many delegates, particularly Anti-Federalists, to have an open-ended ability of the majority to manipulate the rolls of Congress and to use areas under the exclusive control of the federal government as the source for new voting members.

The US Constitution is quite clear, however, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle would choose to ignore it rather than follow the law of the land for self-serving ambition. Indeed!